Minnette Boesel -- now the mayor's assistant for cultural affairs -- first set foot in Houston 33 years ago, on a plane from Baltimore, focused on seeing her new fiancé, Peter. In his car, they headed downtown.

It was the height of the oil boom, cranes everywhere, helicopters zipping between clumps of new skyscrapers.

One of their first stops was the Hyatt downtown, where armadillos were skittering across the tiles in "armadillo races." The lobby was full of men and women in western wear. At at the Spindletop restaurant atop the hotel, hats, boots and buckles also ruled.

"I was like, 'The whole city of Houston must be like this,' " Boesel remembers.

No one told her that it was Go Texan Day -- the Texas version of Halloween in the Castro, the Friday each year when, in honor of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Houstonians play at being cowboys. Boesel thought that Houston was hats, boots and armadillo races every day.

A year later, she married Peter and moved to Houston. In Baltimore, she'd worked in historic preservation. In Houston, she found a booming city with little regard for its past. She explored the city, visiting the historic areas that hadn't yet been paved over or dug up.

"There was this unfettered, unbridled, development that was going on," she said. History didn't seem to have a chance.

Downtown's Market Square area for example, had turned into a run-down, vacant mess. Once the site of Houston's first city hall and the businesses that surrounded it, it was now dangerous-feeling, full of abandoned buildings.

"It was so far downhill, it was scary," Boesel remembered. She thought:"If we lose this, we're going to lose the beginnings of our city. We can't lose this." She found like-minded people and worked with them to save the neighborhood.

These days, the latest incarnation of Market Square Park is a lively place with a dog run, a little gyros restaurant and frequent outdoor events. Many of the historic buildings that once surrounded the park have survived and now house businesses and restaurants. In most parts of Houston, the pace development is still dumbfounding: Buildings fall, and rise, and fall again. But in little patches of Houston, like Market Square, preservation is increasingly common -- a reminder of a past that matters.

St. John Barned-Smith joined the Houston Chronicle in 2014 and covers public safety and major disasters, including floods, bombings and mass shootings. Barned-Smith came to the Chronicle after a stint in the Peace Corps and after reporting in Philadelphia and suburban Maryland. Follow him on Twitter or email tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.